


Easy For You To Say

by Demerite



Series: Trektober 2019 [5]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Dissociation, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Panic Attacks, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-23 13:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20893004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demerite/pseuds/Demerite
Summary: After far too long, Gabriel Lorca comes home.





	Easy For You To Say

**Author's Note:**

> For the Day 5 Prompt: Heartfelt Serenade, but I kinda flipped it on its head and made it about little gestures instead, because the little things can be just as powerful as the big. And also I had a lot of Lorkat feels. 
> 
> Completely ignores Certain Events from the Season 2 Finale, because fuck that shit.

The order to divert to Qo'nos to collect the Federation Ambassador arrives from out of the blue. 

Chris accepts it without expression, closes the channel, and reaches for the comm panel. There's someone he needs to speak to before they arrive. 

"Security Chief Tyler to the Ready Room." He summons, voice tight. 

Ash must have been nearby, because he's there in moments, slipping silently into the room, eyes watchful and wary until he sees that it's only Chris waiting for him. Ash's assurance that their personal relationship is solid might be firm, but he's still doubtful and anxious about his position in Starfleet. He'd once likened being called into the Ready Room to being summoned to the principal's office in school, a comparison Chris, with his father being a teacher, could understand all too easily. 

Chris steps out from behind his desk, and raises his left hand to cover the Starfleet insignia on his chest. It's become their signal to each other, a way of saying 'this is you and me, not you, me, and Starfleet'. It's their shorthand for 'I'm here' and 'I love you' and 'we're alright' when they're supposed to be keeping it professional. 

"We're been ordered to Qo'nos to pick up the Federation detail there." Chris says. There's no use sugar-coating it. 

He watches Ash take in the news, process it, and understand. He sees his initial reaction - the flinch - and the way he suppresses it fast enough that if Chris didn't know him so well, and hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have seen it. 

"What do you need from me?" Chris asks, and Ash lets out a long, slow sigh. 

"Can I just stay in here?" He requests, "I can be on the bridge if you need me, but I can't...not if _she's _going to be there." ****

Chris knows who he means at once. L'Rell. She's still Klingon High Chancellor, and there's plenty of chance he's going to have a field calls from her. 

"Of course." He says, and Ash's grateful smile lights up the room. 

*

Of all the people they could have been picking up, Chris hadn't expected _her. _

"Admiral Cornwell." He says, trying and failing to keep the warmth out of his voice, "Welcome aboard." 

"Captain Pike." Katrina Cornwell replies, stepping down from the transporter platform and offering him a warm smile, "It's good to be here." 

"I hadn't realised the Federation had appointed you Ambassador to the Empire." Chris says as they start back towards the Bridge. 

She lets out a short laugh. "They didn't." She explains, "But it turns out when the Klingon High Chancellor decides she wants something, the Federation does everything they can to make it happen." 

"And she wanted you?" Chris waves her into the turbolift ahead of him. 

Katrina nods, "Mutual respect, or something like it. From our time on the Ship of the Dead." 

Chris digests that as the turbolift ascends. He knows a little about the admiral's time in captivity there, and he knows that she and L'Rell bonded somewhat over trying to escape, even if L'Rell had only been pretending for the sake of getting onto _Discovery. _

"Captain Pike to the bridge!" Una's voice on the comm is sharp but controlled, the tone that Chris knows spells trouble. He doesn't acknowledge, because the doors are already open, and he's striding out onto the Bridge seconds later. 

"Report." He says, already taking the conn from Una as she moves down to take the helm from her relief. 

"Quantum signature." She's already explaining as he finishes the request. 

"Onscreen now, Captain." Spock's ever-level tone cuts in. 

"Origin?" Chris asks, looking over the lines of data on the screen in front of him. 

"Visual range in three, two, one, onscreen." Una this time. 

The image on the main viewscreen cuts to starfield, sharpens, focuses. 

"That's a shuttle." Chris states the obvious, and he's already mentally cataloguing even as he speaks. That's a shuttle from a _Cardenas _class, he's sure. "One of ours." 

"No." A voice from behind him and to his left says, "Not one of ours." 

"Tyler?" Chris asks, because Ash has seen, or knows, or has put together, something that he hasn't. 

Ash ignores Chris' request, looks over to Una, "Commander, can you get closer on the registry number?" 

Una nods, her fingers flying over her console. The image pixellates wildly, then settles, and Chris sees what Ash had already guessed at. 

On the hull of the battered little shuttle, the words _ISS Buran _are picked out in black, above the familiar sword-and-planet symbol of the Terran Empire. 

"There is a Starfleet identification code being broadcast." Spock's voice, "Cross-referencing now." 

"Make it quick, I want to know who is on that shuttle, Lieutenant." Pike says. They need to get this contained, and _fast. _

"Yes sir." Spock's reply is cut off by a beep from the computer, "ID code registers as-"

He's cut off _again, _this time by Admiral Cornwell as she steps up beside Chris. 

"Gabriel." She says, her voice soft and stricken, "That's Gabriel's code." 

*

When Gabriel Lorca met Katrina Cornwell, she was a year ahead of him at the academy, and she was trying to explain a concept to him a few other students in a study-group that at the time, had seemed utterly baffling to him. 

"Look," She'd said, her frustration so easy to see in those days, "It's really quite simple." 

"Easy for you to say." Gabriel had piped up from his seat at the back of the group, unable to keep his thoughts to himself, "You've already passed this class."

The look she'd given him would have frozen lesser men in place, but Gabriel Lorca is not _lesser men. _The verbal sparring that he'd started that day had continued for an entire semester, after which she'd marched up to him in the middle of the cafeteria, braced her hands on her hips, and asked when he was going to ask her out, damnit. 

*

It had become their thing. 

"Easy for you to say." Kat said when Gabriel assured her that she'd pass her second-year exams with flying colours. She did, and he was endlessly smug about it for days, but he also told her how proud he was in between kisses. 

"Easy for you to say." Gabriel muttered miserably when she told him that he'd get through the third-year planetary survival course. He did, and it was her turn to be both smug and proud. 

"Easy for you to say." Kat whispered, tipsy and delighted, when Gabriel insisted that they could get back onto campus after dark without being seen by security. They did, but that's not the point. 

"Easy for you to say." Gabriel said, when she'd promised she wouldn't be tempted by anyone else when she left on her first deployment, even though he'd never asked her to promise him that. 

*

She's breathing too hard, and too fast, she knows she is. The world starts to fade out of her periphery, the lights on the bridge bleeding together until there is just bright and less bright, the faces of the crew turned towards her in confusion so longer distinct. Her mind is screaming at her, joy and hope and her instinctive reaction that _no, he's dead, this isn't real, _tearing through her thoughts. 

That's his code. Not just his ID, but _their _code as well, hidden in a way that she'd be able to see, the words etched into the shuttle's carbon-scored hull in morse code. 

. .- ... -.-- / ..-. --- .-. / -.-- --- ..- / - --- / ... .- -.-- .-.-.-

_Easy for you to say. _

Words they've said to each other time and time again, until they lost their original meaning and came to mean something else entirely. 

_Easy for you to say. _

It was the closest they ever got to saying 'I love you'. 

She can't breathe. Every time she tries, the breath seems to catch in her throat, in her chest. The Bridge feels like it's spinning around her, she can't still be standing, she feels like she's falling, she _must_ be falling. 

And then there's a hand on her arm, steady and sure, and instead of flinching from it, she makes her own hand move until it's pressed over the grip, clinging to it because that's _real, _she knows that it's real, even if nothing else around her is. 

"Breathe, Admiral." The words a spoken quietly, close to her ear. "Deep breath in, normal breath out." 

She nearly laughs, because how many times has she said that to someone? How many times has she talked someone down from a panic attack or a flashback of a dissociative state with those very words? 

It's her own advice, and for a few moments she still struggles to take it, her breath still catches and she can't get enough air, but through it all, there's a strong, sure grip on her arm, and a low, calming voice in her ear, and her breath starts to come a little easier, and soon she's breathing, still a little fast, still a little shallow, but she's breathing, and she's still alive, and the world fades back in, a little at a time, and then her awareness is back, in a sudden, almost violent explosion of sound and light and colour and movement. 

Kat blinks, flinches from the sudden sensory assault, and looks around herself. 

She's still standing, still beside the Captain's chair, which now holds Una, instead of Chris. The commander's attention is focused forward, she doesn't even glance at Kat, which Kat _desperately _appreciates. She knows that her reaction was outside of her control, but she still feels embarrassed. 

The hand on her arm, Kat realises, belongs to Ash Tyler. 

When she looks over at him, he offers her a small, slightly crooked smile. 

"Welcome back." He says, and she can't help but return a smile of her own. She's already starting to feel a little shaky, knows the adrenaline crash from the state she was just in is going to hit soon. 

Ash seems to realise this, and Kat knows that's from experience. "Ready Room?" He asks quietly, and she nods. 

*

Kat paces the Ready Room, tension and anger and confusion and longing all warring in her mind. It's been nearly three hours since the shuttle was brought on board, and so far, no-one has told her _anything. _She's the ranking officer here, she knows she could go in there and take command, but she also knows that the moment she tried it, command would be taken back from her immediately. She's too close to this. Her reaction on the Bridge, and her inner turmoil at the possibility of Gabriel, _her Gabriel, _being alive, proves that. 

Ash had brought her into the Ready Room, sat with her and made her drink a glass of water until she had her breathing and heart rate and emotions somewhat more under control, and then she'd sent him out, so she could think in private. 

And so now she's pacing the borders of the room, trying and failing to make sense of it all. 

The Ready Room doors open, and Kat jumps, so lost in her own thoughts that she hadn't realised anyone was coming in. Chris strides over to the meeting table, Spock, Una, and Ash behind him. Kat moves to join them without waiting to be asked. 

"So?" Kat asks, seating herself at, "Is it him?" 

"We don't know." Chris says simply. 

"How can you not know?" Kat knows she's probably being a little unfair, but she can't help it right now. She _has _to know if it's really him, because if it isn't, she doesn't want to trust in the hope that's been blooming, bright and dangerous, inside her chest ever since the shuttle made its way onto the screen, and she read the words etched into the hull. 

"All we've got is an ID code, and a man who _looks _like him." Chris says, "It's not a lot to go on. We both know how easily those things can be faked." 

She's already shaking his head as he finishes his statement. "His ID alone I'd believe." She says, "But not this. May I?" She reaches for the PADD Chris is holding, and he passes it over. Head down, she swipes through the footage from the main viewscreen, until she gets to the image she wants. "Here." She points out the lines of dots and dashes, painstaking carved into it's hull. 

Chris looks it over, reads it. "'Easy for you to say'." He quotes, and raises his gaze to meet hers. 

"It was our..._thing._" Kat tries to explain, doesn't quite know how to put it into words, "From back at the Academy. We used to say it to each other." She runs a hand distractedly though her hair, "Look, quantum analysis will confirm, right," She looks to Spock, who offers her a curt nod, "But it's him. I _know _it is. Just, please Chris, I want to see him." 

Chris looks at her, and sighs. "I'll see what Phil says." He tells her finally. 

*

Outside the doors to the intensive care unit. Kat stops to take several slow, deep breaths. 

"You alright?" Ash asks her, his voice calm and quiet. 

Chris and Phil had both insisted that she take a security officer in there with her, and she'd immediately requested Ash. 

Kat nods, takes one more breath, and steps forward. 

The doors open. 

She steps through, hears the doors close behind her, and looks up. 

It's him. She can tell it's him from all the way across the unit, and she can't even see his face yet. For a moment, she can't seem to move, frozen in place. But she had to. She had to go to him. She has to make sure he's real. 

She's moving then, one step and then another, and then another, until she's standing beside the biobed. He hasn't realised she's there yet, his eyes are closed, and for a moment, she thinks he might be sleeping. 

"Gabriel." Her voice comes out soft, almost reverent, and she doesn't think he's heard her. But then his eyes open, meet hers, exhausted and cautious but undeniably him, and Kat can't keep the choked-off sob from escaping. 

"Kat." His voice is low and rough, and in it, she hears the same almost disbelieving tone. He reaches for her, and his hand is shaking, and she takes it in both of hers. 

"I'm here." She murmurs, "It's going to be alright."

"Easy for you to say." He replies, and for the first time since his shuttle came onscreen, Kat believes it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly could have written like, another thousand words of Gabriel and Kat's reunion, but this fic is long enough already. 
> 
> Want to know more about Trektober? Click [HERE](https://aishahiwatari.tumblr.com/post/188059640163/trektober) for the info post on Aisha's tumblr, or [HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Trektober2019) for the AO3 collection to read our fic. 
> 
> Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://demerite.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
